CHAPTER xn ^LIAN—THE MACEDONIAN INVENTION, OR THE FIRST MENTION OF AN ARTIFICIAL FLY " They knew 'e stole ; 'e knew they knowed ; They did not teU, or make a fuss. But winked at ^Elian down the road. And 'e vrinked back—the same as us ! " ^^LIAN (170-230 A.D.), who, though bom in Italy and broughtup in the Latin tongue, acquired so complete a command ofGreek that he could speak it as weU as an Athenian gentleman(hence his sobriquet jusXtyXwrroc), composed his works inGreek. His Natural History 2 soon became a standard work onZoology, although in arrangement it is very defective: forinstance, he skips from elephants (XI. 15) to dragons in thevery next chapter, and from the livers of mice in II. 56 to theuses of oxen in II. 57. This treatment of things, ttojkiXovoiKiXwg, is asserted by the author to be intentional, so as toavoid boring the reader. For his part he avows that he pre¬fers observing the habits of animals and fish, listening to thenightingale, or studying the migration of cranes, to heapingup riches!3 Whether as a Naturalist .<Elian possesses any value, whetherhis work is " scrappy and gossiping, and largely coUected fromolder and more logical vwiters," * or " from the industry » After KipUng. 2 Tlepi T.&u)v iSdrriTOS. ' See Smith's Did. Gk. and Rom, Biog. and Myth., s.v. ' .SUan.' * Perizonius has proved that .^lian transferred large portions of theDeipnosophistts of Athenaeus to his Varia Historia, a robbery which musthave been committed almost in the Ufetime of the pillaged author: that 185